Following the extension of the Canadian Pacific Railway to
Vancouver in 1887, many Chinese labourers moved to other parts of Canada to
look for work. However, socio-economic discrimination and racial hostility,
in addition to a lack of capital and language barriers, limited their
opportunities.

Under these circumstances, many Chinese established hand laundries, as
a means to earn a living within the existing economic niches of Canadian
society. With a majority of Chinese living in poverty, the entire Chinese
community was virtually reduced to the lowest socio-economic class of
society from around the turn of the century until the Depression years.

The Wah Chong Laundry, Vancouver, 1884Courtesy of City of Vancouver Archives

This exhibit recreates the ambience of the Chinese laundries found in
large numbers across Canada between 1900 and the 1950s. The display,
based on extensive fieldwork, incorporates artifacts from various laundries
including those from the Central Laundry operated for many decades in
Winnipeg by the late Ho King. It aims to present the laundry within the
context of our urban life and ethnic and immigration history.

In the reconstructed laundry, visitors first enter a counter area and
then a kitchen area where they can view an original documentary showing
interviews with the older generation of Chinese laundrymen and their
offspring. Moving into the laundry working area, visitors then discover
the difficult tasks involved in the washing and boiling process,
surrounded by presses, irons and other tools of the trade. They learn
of the hard physical work carried out by the laundrymen in a cramped
and steamy environment.

To many of the laundrymen's descendants, the hand laundry is a symbol
not only of hardship but of survival, endurance, patience and sacrifice
for the future.

View a Quicktime VR panoramic
movie of the exhibit (481K), in which you can move between two rooms
by positioning your cursor in the doorway and clicking.These movies can be viewed with any
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From Coast to Coast

The Fraser River gold rush and the construction of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, among other developments, brought thousands of
Chinese labourers to British Columbia from 1858 to 1885. Following the
completion of the CPR, many of these immigrants moved to other parts
of the country to continue to search for their dream of the "golden
mountain." Many set up laundry businesses in railway towns and cities
east of the Rockies and as far away as Quebec, the Maritimes and
Newfoundland. From 1890 to 1950, a significant number of Chinese engaged
in this trade. For example, in Montreal in 1921, there was a population
of 1,735 Chinese with an estimated 368 laundries.

Two factors contributed to the establishment of the Chinese laundries.
First, all that was required was a bit of capital and long hours of
work, with the owners speaking little English or French. Secondly, the
Chinese were discouraged from entering other occupations and were
subjected to legal restrictions and socio-economic discrimination. They
could only engage in labour-intensive work.

Laundrymen experienced social and family isolation. In most cases,
their family members were left behind in China. In an era of racial
intolerance and fearful of competition from cheap Oriental labour for
jobs, some politicians and trade union groups pressured the Dominion
Government to severely restrict the numbers of incoming Chinese, Japanese
and East Indians. Head taxes and legislative exclusions discouraged the
immigration of family members, and ultimately, the Chinese Immigration Act
(1923-1947) barred the admission of all Chinese. The hand laundry thus
became essentially a man's occupation. Ho King, for example, the proprietor
of Winnipeg's Central Laundry, left China in 1918 and was joined by his
wife in 1959 - a forty-one year separation.

The life of a laundryman was very difficult and monotonous. Most of his
time was spent washing, ironing, pressing, packaging and delivering
clothes and chopping wood. The work was hard, and the income was very
low. Apart from their long hours of work, laundrymen made an occasional
trip to Chinatown to buy groceries and have a cup of tea or a game of
mahjong with their fellow clansmen and friends.

Laundryman with a wooden washing machineCourtesy of Glenbow Archives

With few resources and the denial of opportunity, the Chinese community
in Canada was relegated to the low end of the socio-economic ladder for
more than half a century. With gradual mechanization from the late 1940s
to the 1960s, and with the ageing of the earlier Chinese immigrants, the
occupation of laundryman inevitably petered out, but it remains an
unforgettable part of Chinese-Canadian history.

This permanent exhibit both captures and commemorates the essence, life
and contributions of the Chinese laundrymen. Further along in the Canada
Hall, the Pacific Rim exhibit explores the twentieth-century patterns
of Asian immigration, socio-economic activities, and contribution within
Canada.